Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/853

Rh, was placed at fourteen or fifteen years of age in the academy of the Rev. Dr. Alexander McWhorter, of Newark, N. J., where he pursued the study of Latin and other usual branches and began to learn Greek. But as Dr. Peter Wilson, of Hackensack, was a more distinguished teacher of the latter tongue than Dr. McWhorter, David was transferred to his academy in 1785. The next year he entered Columbia College, remaining in that institution until the middle of his junior year. He had also private tutors in the classics and the French language. In the beginning of the junior year, finding his time not fully occupied, he took up the study of medicine as a private pupil under Dr. Richard Bayley. "He had scarcely begun his studies," writes his son, "before the celebrated 'Doctors' Mob' occurred, which threatened serious results to those concerned; it arose in consequence of the imprudence of some of the students carelessly pursuing dissection in the building upon the site since occupied as the New York Hospital. This mob caused many of the professors to absent themselves from the city and others to seek shelter in the city jail. Mr. Hosack, with the rest of the students interested, learning that the mob had seized upon and demolished the anatomical preparations found in the lecture room above referred to, repaired immediately to Columbia College, with the view of saving such specimens as were to be found in that institution. Before reaching the college, however, and when on his way in Park Place, he was knocked down by a stone striking him on the head; he would in all probability have been killed had it not been for the protection he received from the neighbor of his father, Mr. Mount, who was passing at the time and took care of him."

In the fall of 1788 young Hosack entered the senior class of the College of New Jersey at Princeton in order that he might the sooner complete his collegiate course and devote his whole attention to the study of medicine, to which he had become ardently attached. "Having finished my course at Princeton," he says in some memoranda that he left for the benefit of his children, "I returned to New York and resumed my favorite medical studies, to which I now gave my undivided attention, availing myself of every advantage which the city at that time presented. I attended the lectures on anatomy and physiology delivered by Dr. Wright Post, those on chemistry and practice of physic, by Dr. Nicholas Romayne, and the valuable course on midwifery and the diseases of women and children, by Dr. Bard.